Blog Archive - Todd Olinsky-Paul
Load growth: The impending grid apocalypse that’s giving your utility operator nightmares
What does the phrase “load growth” suggest to you? If you’re not working for an electric utility or regulatory agency, the answer is probably not much. But within the arcane world of distribution and transmission grid operators, state utility regulators and regional wholesale electric market arbiters, “load growth” evokes the kind of visceral chill normal…
Battery Storage – What’s it Worth?
When considering whether to invest in a new technology, the first thing anyone wants to know is will the benefits outweigh the costs? This is no less true of state energy agencies and utility regulators who are generally tasked with ensuring that taxpayers and ratepayers get a good return on their dollar. For this reason,…
With Forward Capacity Auction Success, Batteries are Winning in New England
Clean energy advocates are celebrating a major energy storage milestone in New England: Plus Power, a San Francisco-based developer of grid-scale batteries, is building the two largest battery projects to date in the region — a 150-MW/300-MWh lithium-ion battery system at Carver, Mass., south of Boston, called Cranberry Point Energy Storage, and a 175-MW/350-MWh lithium-ion…
Connecticut Powers into the Lead with Breakthrough Customer Battery Program
With the long-anticipated approval of its new Statewide Electric Storage Program, Connecticut has just leapfrogged the rest of New England to become the new regional leader in distributed battery storage program development. The new program adopted by the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority is a massive 9-year initiative that combines up-front incentives with customer performance…
The Lesson of Texas – And a New Program States Can Use to Quickly Fund the Distributed Energy Storage Solution
If we learn anything from the Texas blackouts, and the death and suffering that have resulted, it should be this: distributed resilient solar+storage systems are no longer a luxury – they are an essential tool to protect citizens from power outages, and modernize the grid so outages become less frequent and severe. The thing is,…
Massachusetts and Vermont crack the code on distributed energy storage
In 2019, Massachusetts commenced a nation-leading experiment by, for the first time, incorporating behind-the-meter energy storage into the Commonwealth’s three-year energy efficiency plan, through the ConnectedSolutions program, as a peak demand reducing measure. The state argued that this represented a new type of efficiency. Batteries do not generally reduce net consumption of electricity – the…
ConnectedSolutions First Results: Massachusetts’ groundbreaking efficiency program for customer batteries receives its first report card
Last year, with technical support from Clean Energy Group (CEG), Massachusetts became the first state to officially incorporate behind-the-meter battery storage into its energy efficiency plan, and utilities began enrolling customers across the state in a groundbreaking pay-for-performance program. Now, preliminary results from this program, called ConnectedSolutions, have been published in a report from Navigant…
DC Court Upholds Major FERC Storage Order, Should Lead to Massive New Battery Markets Across Country
This morning, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld a major federal rule (FERC Order 841) that should lead to significantly expanded battery storage use in wholesale markets across America. In a hotly contested case, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that FERC has the authority to require states…
The New England Battery Revolution: In a Public Health Crisis, State Efficiency Programs Are Making Resilient Power Affordable for All
In this time of the coronavirus, losing electricity has more far reaching consequences than ever before. To those at home with children, a power outage could mean no distance learning; to those with home-based medical equipment, it could mean illness or worse; to those now working remotely, it could mean inability to run a business,…
FERC Upholds Order Opening Markets to Energy Storage
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted this week to uphold its landmark Order 841, which states that the nation’s electric grid operators (RTOs and ISOs) must allow energy storage resources fair and equal access to provide services in regional wholesale energy markets. The order is anticipated to provide important new market opportunities to energy…